V Was for Victory.... (4)

Politics and American Culture During WWII (4). John Morton Blum. New York and London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. 1976.

Why read it? Perspective from the Home Front in World War II. The effects of American propaganda on the American people. A completely different view of a war from our more recent wars, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan.

Ideas:

“…a new agency with clear, central authority…the Office of War Information, in the spring of 1942.” p. 30.

“The new policy-making post was to go to Elmer Davis, a veteran newspaperman and radio newscaster whose dry voice and sparse style symbolized reportorial accuracy and integrity.” p. 30.

“Yet Davis had to proceed with the authority only of a coordinator.” p. 32.

“As [Milton] Eisenhower put it directly to MacLeish, ‘Our job is to promote an understanding of policy, not to make policy.’ ”

“Confident that the American people could take bad news, Davis wanted to tell them more about casualties and losses than did the armed forces, who prevailed.” p. 36.

To be continued.